Murder of a Dead Man (36 page)

Trevor picked up the radio receiver.

‘Don’t request back-up!’

‘Why not? If he’s in there…’

‘He might not be. That kid’s not sixteen ounces.’

‘This is one time we should play by the book for all our sakes. Anna was my friend too. We owe it to her to see that this thing is dealt with properly, leaving no legal loopholes for a defence team to use.’

‘And the bastard who turned her into mincemeat?’

‘I want to make sure that when we get him to court, he won’t walk free. And he will if we make a balls-up now.’

‘That’s supposing he reaches court,’ Peter muttered.

Most of the buildings in Park Street were pre-first world war. More than half were boarded up. Two pubs still had their doors open but they allowed bikers to ride in on their machines. A warehouse belonging to a retail chain that had moved out of the town years before stood shuttered and closed next to the grimy, ornate art-deco facade of the old cinema.

Two uniformed officers had responded to Trevor’s call for assistance and were waiting for them in the alleyway.

Trevor left his car and studied the back of the grey brick building. ‘There’s a window around here that’s been prised open.’

‘Shouldn’t we wait for a warrant, sir?’ one of the constables suggested.

Peter gave him a withering look. ‘How long you been out of college, boy?’

‘Six weeks.’

‘Any more questions like that and you’ll be back there.’

Peter walked up to a row of three small windows set close together. He took a penknife from his back pocket and, slipping the blade beneath the first panel, levered upwards. It remained obstinately fixed. But when he tried the second, it swung up easily.

Trevor turned and saw that the rookies had been joined by Chris. ‘Wait here until either Sergeant Collins or I calls you.’ He turned to the rookies,

‘You two guard the entrances to this alley, one either end. The slightest sign of trouble, radio for help.’

‘Yes, sir.’ They ran to their posts.

Trevor peered under the board. ‘We’re going to need torches.’

‘And a gun,’ Peter added.

‘Chris, radio the station and ask for torches and armed personnel. Peter, there’s no point in going in until we have weapons,’ Trevor shouted as Peter swung back the panel and started heaving himself up on his good arm.

‘If Weaver is in there, and Morris has gone after him, Weaver’s as good as dead, and with him gone we may never know the bloody truth.’ Peter disappeared behind the board, leaving Trevor no option but to follow.

It was as dark in the old cinema as it had been inside the abandoned factory.

‘Bloody hopeless,’ Peter growled, walking straight into a stinking urinal as the board swung back after Trevor had entered.

‘Torches, sir.’ Chris opened the board and handed in two heavy-duty models.

‘Where did you get them?’ Trevor switched one on.

‘Sent one of the lads to borrow them from a garage around the corner.’

Peter took the other, switched it on and stepped forward again, splashing through the foul-smelling mess on the floor. ‘They could have found a better bloody way in.’

Trevor swung his torch beam around until he found a door. He pushed it and it opened to reveal pitch-black, musty smelling air. As he swept the beam from side to side, torchlight glinted back at him from the glass panel of a booth that had once dispensed tickets and sweets. Beyond the booth, a corridor opened into a narrow hallway, ending in doors at either end.

By tacit agreement Peter took the right-hand door, Trevor the left. They emerged simultaneously into a vast auditorium. Blackness closed in on them, crushing, absolute and silent. The patter of tiny feet indicated the presence of rats. Pointing their torches down they stepped forward in unison. One step at a time, they shone their lights along the rows of seats, waiting until their beams met in the centre. Then they turned their backs and scanned along the side rows until the light hit the far walls. Slowly and torturously, they covered every inch of what was left of the original seats. The torch light illuminated piles of rubbish, food cartons black with mould and chewed by rodents, broken springs sprouting from mouldering crimson velour upholstery.

Finally they reached the front row. Below the tattered gold silk curtain that once rose and fell in front of the screen, the platform was heaped high with empty food tins, old newspapers and cardboard boxes. Keeping their torches trained low, they played their lights around the front area. Doors stood either side of the wide curtains. They were both heading towards the right-hand one when Trevor halted in his tracks.

‘See that?’

A light flickered in the back of the hall.

‘The projection booth,’ Peter whispered, as they sped back up the aisle.

They could smell the petrol before they reached the projection room. Trevor put a shoulder to the door.

It wasn’t locked and it burst open, pitching him forward. As the torch rolled from his hand, its beam settled on Tom Morris, who was standing, petrol can in hand. Adam Weaver lay at his feet, gagged and bound. His elbows were tied together at his back, his wrists, knees and ankles trussed like a turkey’s.

Momentarily fazed, Morris appeared dis-orientated, but only for as long as it took him to register Trevor’s presence. He pulled a gun from the inside pocket of his coat, and fired.

Trevor cried out and slumped to the floor alongside Weaver. Peter switched off his torch and ducked behind the door. He peered cautiously around it.

Trevor’s torch lay on the floor of the booth, as did the light Morris had been using. They illuminated Weaver’s feet, encased in a pair of shabby trainers, and the back of Trevor’s head lying very still. Peter blinked, now was not the time to worry about Trevor. He had to think of Morris – and himself.

Morris’s hands and arms slithered into view as he crept forward on his stomach. He was heading for the door and the passage where Peter crouched.

He was holding something in one hand. Peter recognised the gleaming silver mechanism of a cigarette lighter, as Morris flicked it on and edged the flame towards Weaver’s petrol-soaked body.

Peter saw Weaver’s eyes grow wide in terror.

Aiming carefully, he hurled the only thing he was holding. His torch. It caught Morris’s hand, and the lighter flew backwards out of his fingers, landing on a pile of rubbish in a corner. The flame flickered for a few seconds, but it was long enough to set the papers and rags alight.

‘Tom!’ Peter shouted. ‘Drop your gun.’

‘Make me!’ Morris shouted.

‘It’s over,’ Peter yelled, conscious of the flames licking ever closer to Adam and Trevor. ‘We know you killed Laura Weaver.’

‘She had it coming. She was going to tell my wife. I couldn’t let her…’

Adam Weaver suddenly threw his weight sideways, propelling both Trevor and himself into the far corner, as far from the rapidly spreading fire as was possible in the confined space.

Morris’s gun flashed a second time. Peter threw himself back, out of the doorway. The bullet plucked at his sleeve.

‘Brooke?’ Peter shouted, hoping the constable could hear him. ‘Send up reinforcements.’

‘You won’t arrest me. I know this place inside out,’ Morris spat. ‘I had a life, a good life…’

‘Bought at the expense of Laura’s and of the poor bastard you burned alive in Jubilee Street.’

Peter tried to distract Morris and draw him out of the booth. Weaver and Trevor were in there behind him. Weaver had moved himself and Trevor once. If he had the strength to move again…

‘When Blanche told me Hannah had seen a down-and-out she thought was her father, I knew Adam had come back. I had to kill him. I had work, important work, and a wife who loved me. I couldn’t give that up, not for someone like Adam and not for a tramp like Laura . . ’

‘You killed her because she was a tramp?’ Peter inched nearer to see how close the flames were to Trevor and Weaver.

‘She was going to tell my wife. And afterwards, when I thought it was finished, Weaver escaped from prison. Then Brian Marks warned me Weaver looked different. He knew I was a friend of Banche’s. A trustworthy, happily married friend.

Not a boyfriend she would get tired of, like Nigel. I promised Brian Marks I’d take care of her, and Hannah. And I tried. I thought I’d killed Adam down on the docks. Only it was someone else. I didn’t even succeed in smoking him out of that factory, and all those other people died,’ Morris sat between Peter and Trevor, his back to the door, his gun cradled in his lap, watching the flames lick closer to Trevor and Adam. ‘They didn’t deserve to die. But it wasn’t my fault, it was his.’ He pointed his gun at Adam. ‘It was his fault Laura was neurotic. He married her but he didn’t love her.

That’s why she wouldn’t leave me alone even when I told her it was finished…’

‘And Anna?’ Peter demanded.

‘Anna?’

‘The woman who was sheltering Adam,’ Peter answered.

‘I have a good network. Better than the police’s.

One of my boys saw Adam Weaver going in there.

They tell me everything. Stupid bitch got in the way when I went after Adam. He stood back and let her take what I meant for him.’

‘Her face was cut to ribbons.’

‘She flung herself between us – hurled herself on the knife…’

Peter didn’t believe a word of it but the flames were at Trevor’s heels. Desperate, he kicked the door wide. The draught of air fanned the fire. Smoke billowed out into the corridor. Morris pointed his gun at Peter and fired – again – and again. Peter flung himself to the floor. Once the bullets had stopped flying and the gun had clicked empty he moved swiftly. Adam Weaver lay in the corner huddled close to Trevor, who still hadn’t moved.

Morris picked up a burning rag and flung it into Weaver’s face before darting out the door. Peter heard the click of a magazine being loaded into the gun. Adam screamed.

Peter rolled out of Morris’s path. Heaving himself to his feet, he plunged into the smoke-filled inferno of the projection booth.

Petrol burnt blue over Weaver’s face, blistering his skin, as Peter stripped off his coat and thrust it over the bound man’s blazing head to smother the flames. Grabbing Trevor’s legs he hauled him into the corridor. Feet thundered down a passage behind him.

‘He’s got a gun!,’ Peter yelled as Dan hurtled into view. Morris’s gun flashed in the auditorium.

Dan whirled around and fired at the flash. There was a scream followed by the sound of crackling flames.

‘Call an ambulance!’ Peter yanked Adam out of the projection room. He pulled his coat away from the man’s face. Adam’s skin and hair was a brittle, blackened mess. Even the gag Tom had wound around his mouth was burnt through.

Peter pulled the flick knife from his sock and cut through the ropes binding Weaver’s arms and feet. ‘It’s all right, mate,’ he murmured to Trevor’s inert body. ‘Help’s on the way.’

It was raining. The grey-stone crematorium glistened darkly as the mourners, heads bent, filed slowly out through the exit. Peter paused to view the sodden wreaths laid in the square that bore Anna Bradley’s name and dates. His own cushion of white carnations and red roses already looked weather-beaten, and the ink on the card had run beneath its plastic slip, making his message indecipherable. It was just as well. He didn’t want anyone to read his personal goodbye to Anna.

‘I’m sorry, Peter.’ Lyn Sullivan walked towards him, soberly dressed in a long, dark, hooded cape.

She held out her hand. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she repeated. ‘I know how much Anna meant to you.

And to everyone else on the force.’

He turned his anguished face to hers. His cheeks were damp, but she couldn’t tell whether it was from rain, or tears. Lyn faltered, searching for something to say that would ease his pain. She couldn’t think of anything, and, impotent in the presence of his intense grief, she moved on.

Trevor was thanking the vicar for his sympathetic handling of the service. She waited for him to finish. He shook the vicar’s hand then walked over and joined her.

‘I went to the station when I heard that one of the sergeants had been killed, and another injured,’

she said

‘I know. Sarah Merchant told me you’d been in.’

‘You were hurt?’

‘Not badly.’

‘Trevor…’

‘It’s not Daisy. It never was,’ he interrupted.

‘I know. She came to see me. Told me what a lucky girl I was.’

‘A lot of people would disagree with her on that.’ He smiled grimly.

‘Not me,’ Lyn murmured.

‘Just as well Daisy’s working in this town.’ He needed to switch their conversation to the commonplace. He couldn’t deal with emotion – not with Peter standing only a few feet away. ‘Adam Weaver’s face is going to need rebuilding again.’

‘At least his name is clear and he has his daughter back.’

‘When I last saw him he seemed happy with that much.’

She braced herself for rejection. ‘Trevor, couldn’t we try again?’

‘I don’t think that would be a good idea. It’s not that I don’t want to.’ He shrugged his shoulders in the black uniform coat he’d taken out of mothballs for the occasion. ‘But I’d make plans with you, make you a lot of promises I’d keep only as long as it took for the next investigation to get under way.

You were right, Lyn. Police officers shouldn’t have girlfriends or wives when they’ve already made a commitment to the job. There’s no time left for a personal life.’

‘But this case is over,’ she pleaded stubbornly.

‘You’ve caught your killer. Anna can rest in peace.

We’d have a little time.’

‘Probably not much before another case breaks.’

‘Enough for me to show you how sorry I am.’

He thrust his hands into his pockets. ‘Lyn, do yourself a favour. Walk away now. Before I say yes, and ask you to move back in with me.’

‘If there’s a chance, I’m not going anywhere.’

‘Can’t you see what this is doing to me?’ he begged. ‘I’m not that strong, and it’s not me that will be hurt – it’s you. Peter has been switched to the Serious Crimes Squad. He’s going to need someone around; I’ve asked him to move in with me.’